Picture Lessons in Kafka's The Trial

We know that Kafka was fascinated by pictures,¹ and they play a prominent role in his work. In Der Prozeß, visual art is elevated to a privileged position when K. visits a painter for advice about his trial.² Many scholars have explored Kafka's interest in visual media,³ but none has described in detail the picture lessons that take place in the novel. This may be because many take their cue from the end, when K. wonders if people will say he's learned nothing. But does K. really learn nothing from pictures? In fact, there are many picture lessons in the novel—from the sketch K. examines on the judge's desk to the painting that K scrutinizes in the cathedral.

What, then, do pictures tell us? The one lesson that paintings in Kafka seem not to convey is a mimetic or correspondence theory of truth.⁴ Instead, and alongside K., we are encouraged to discover connections between and within pictures that suggest the importance of relationality and analogy over correspondence⁵ to an external reality. K., for example, notices a portrait that he claims holds a striking resemblance to the one he sees in the lawyer's office even though the medium is different and the man himself has other features. The resemblance lies not in style or realistic representation but in the physical movement and gesture of the judge.

A similar picture lesson occurs when K. inquires as to the verisimilitude of the painting he examines in Titorelli's studio. Titorelli emphatically states that "Nein, ich habe weder die Figur noch den Thronsessel gesehen, das alles ist Erfindung, aber es wurde mir angegeben, was ich zu malen habe" (159). This is no realistic portrayal, since Titorelli has, in fact, never seen the figure. What is more, the judge has never sat on such a throne. Instead, this portraiture is shaped by multiple elements. Just when we're about to interpret the picture as one of imaginative inspiration, we encounter the qualification that the artist is told what to do. There is Erfindung or invention not because he has a powerful imagination, but because he is told what to paint.

Clearly, we're not in the realm of mimetic realism.⁶ However the situation grows even more complicated as Titorelli continues the picture lesson. He explains that this judge is painted as he wishes, "Der Richter wünschte es so," and this portrait "ist für eine Dame bestimmt" (159). The picture includes many overlapping shaping forces like the desire of the subject and a consideration of the intended audience, in this case, a woman. The detail is hard to make out, Titorelli explains, because pastel is unsuited, but his client wished it. Even the medium, it seems, owes something to external shaping forces rather than an intrinsic connection between style and content.

The painting is also informed by the tradition of how the great old judges were painted. Titorelli explains, "Jedem ist genau vorgeschrieben, wie er sich malen lassen darf" (159). Conformity to past tradition and the approval of higher authorities are also at work. Moreover, many of the rules for how portraits may be done are rules that are passed down through certain families. Titorelli has drawings from his father, from whom he inherited the role. He keeps them secret, and "nur wer sie kennt, ist zum Malen von Richtern befähigt" (164). To these various influences, of course, we should add the shaping of the artist's imagination as he invents the picture he has been told to paint.

Still, the portrait invokes one aspect of what many would consider realism, since its subject matter is a bourgeois individual. It also invokes some aspect of romanticism, in which a representation is infused with desire (in this case, of the judge) and the imagination of the artist. The picture invokes an aspect of classicism, too, since there is a strong reliance on past models and authority. Kafka's uniquely modernist approach, therefore, seems to highlight multiple shaping forces. Which elements do we ascribe to individual imagination, and...